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| Sunday, 20 March 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Living on a dump site by Vimukthi Fernando
It is dark inside. A putrid smell greets you as you put your head in. Pots, pans, plates, water cans, bottles, bedding, plastic sheets, cardboard boxes, polythene bags, humans meet your eye. A buzzing sound comes from a swarm of flies, closing in on a bun carried by a little girl, running in to the shelter to get ready for school. We are in a temporary shelter for the displaced at Moratuwa, at the Thalarukkharamaya and Sugathadharmadara Vidyalaya in Egoda Uyana, just 18 kilometers from Colombo. They live in cramped conditions, ten, fifteen, twenty families to a room about 1,500 square feet extent. In a temple and a school adjoining it - merely half a kilometer from where their houses stood, before that fateful day December 26, 2004. Yet, nearly three months after the tsunami, they still languish in the same cramped conditions - four hundred and eighty four individuals including children belonging to 147 families. "You are the only people who came to find out our needs" they say, pointing out that no other representative of the media had visited the place. "Please, could you ask somebody from a television station to visit us, to show our real situation to the world?," they plead. If the Army officers were not there, we do not know what will happen to us. No official or political representative visited the place. Not even the Grama Sevaka (GS)," they say pointing out that they have to make repeated visits to the GS and the local authority. "It has been nearly three months, how can we live any longer in these cramped conditions?" questions Theresa Fernando, a mother of 62. She is concerned about the young families of her children. "Whoever, is responsible should keep in their minds that family problems do occur when people live in cramped conditions. The children are also sick most of the time," she complains. Tents have been pitched for them, in the school grounds "a two roomed tent for two families. But, in conditions not even animals would endure," they say. "This was an old garbage site of the municipality," explains Ranjith Priyalal as he digs up some garbage out of the soil. The grounds where their tents are pitched reeks with muck. "All what they did was to bulldoze the place and pitch the tents. If, they had at least covered the garbage with some hard soil, we could have endured it. Some tents are pitched on old toilet pits. Though we are destitute now, we were living in our own houses and did not have to beg anyone. Why are we treated as subhumans once disaster had struck and now that we have lost everything?" he questions. "Can anyone with dignity live in those tents?," asks M. W. Wimalasena. "See for yourselves. How can two families live in a small space separated only by a sheet of polythene? Some families are headed by young widows. Not all men here are cultured. Many consume liquor. It is more so now, because they cannot forget what happened. How can you assure the safety of the children and the women here?," he questions. K. Sunethra Fernando, a 40-year-old mother is visibly angry at the treatment meted out to her. "This is inhuman. How can we go to those tents with our children. When it rains the whole place goes under water. Rain water seeps inside. "How can we let our children live in there?" she questions. It was a wonder how she managed to escape the vicious waves of the tsunami, she says. "I was severely wounded. I had to undergo two operations at the Kalubowila Hospital. I could only return to my family on January 9, 2005. And this is how they treat us now. We are treated worse than animals," she says. "The army officers say that we will have to live in those tents for only ten days. But what will happen to us next?" they ask.
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